Gemma Spake

Don't quote me on that.

It may have been earlier.

It may have been later.

And she basically realized whilst writing this book that emotions fall across a four-point spectrum.

How intense they are and how aroused they make us feel.

So how positive or negative they are and basically whether they make us feel intense or

or quite slow and quite numb or quite, yeah, what's the opposite of intense?

I don't know, not intense.

And her research shows that people with high emotional granularity, they are significantly better at regulating their emotions and being able to place their emotions because the brain responds differently when an experience is named accurately.

So when you say, I feel bad, your mind has very little to work with because

What does bad mean?

Bad in what way?

But when you identify that I feel disappointed, I feel rejected, I feel overstimulated, resentful, uncertain.

you create clarity and when you are clear on something, you have control over it and the ability to process it.

This is also connected to something called affect labeling, where just simply putting feelings into words reduces, like they've shown this, it reduces activity in your amygdala, your fear response or your threat center, and it increases activity in areas responsible for reasoning and regulation.

In other words, the more specific you are, the more words you have for your emotions, the less overwhelming your emotions tend to feel, meaning you're better able to process them.

This is obviously harder for some people, especially for people on the spectrum, for example, they really struggle with this, but it can be taught.

Her research showed it can be taught and having more language does help, just the language.

A fun fact also about emotional granularity, if you have high emotional granularity,

so you can label more emotions, this may seem very obvious, but you are also better able to read other people and you're better able to guess their emotions from very minor facial expressions.